Baseball Hall of Famer Duke Snider of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who played with the St. Paul Saints in 1947, signs autographs for Saints fans in St. Paul on July 28, 1958. The Saints began life in 1902 and soon were loosely affiliated with the New York Yankees. After that, in the 1930s and â€™40s, it was the Chicago White Sox; and in 1946 they officially became a Triple-A affiliate of the Dodgers, Brooklyn and Los Angeles. (Pioneer Press File)

Former Saint Don Zimmer, left, of the Los Angeles Dodgers with Bob Lillis at the old Midway Stadium in St. Paul on July 28, 1958. (Pioneer Press File)

It was the 1950s, shortly before Rantz won the deciding game in Minnesota’s 1960 NCAA baseball championship, shortly before the Twins arrived in 1961 — and well before he discovered Kirby Puckett playing junior college ball in Illinois.

“My dad was jealous that he had to go to work and I got to go to the ballpark,” Rantz recalled.

Back then, on Opening Day, St. Adalbert’s Grade School finished a distant second to Lexington Park, where Rantz would watch his St. Paul Saints, who reigned supreme in St. Paul for more than six decades. Students with tickets to the game received an excused absence.

“The Saints were our team,” Rantz said.

The Twins showed up in 1961, relocated from Washington and renamed by owner Calvin Griffith. Rantz, another baseball lifer from St. Paul, became the Twins’ director of minor league baseball operations in 1986 but first joined the organization as an intern in 1965.

Rantz’s Saints began life in 1902 and soon were loosely affiliated with the New York Yankees. After that, in the 1930s and ’40s, it was the Chicago White Sox, and in 1946 they officially became a Triple-A affiliate of the Dodgers, first Brooklyn and then Los Angeles.

That brought hall of famers Duke Snider (1947) and Roy Campanella (1948) through St. Paul, as well as the player Rantz recalls best from his time with the Saints, an infielder named Don Zimmer, who nearly died at age 22 when he was hit in the head by a pitch while playing for the Saints.

In all, nine members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame had stints in St. Paul.

“A lot of good players came through the Saints,” said Rantz, 76, now retired in Lino Lakes. In all, he spent 53 years with the Twins before retiring in October 2012.

A few also went through Minneapolis, where Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Carl Yastrzemski played for the rival Minneapolis Millers. Before they left in 1960, the Millers and Saints played more than 20 intercity games, including two-site doubleheaders on holidays such as the Fourth of July and Labor Day — one game at Nicollet Park in Minneapolis and one at Lexington Park in St. Paul.

“That was a great rivalry,” Rantz said.

The transition from amateur to professional baseball in Minnesota happened before either the Saints or Millers existed, with the St. Paul Red Caps in 1877, according to Minnesota baseball historian Rich Arpi.

The Red Caps won the League Alliance, a loosely affiliated league that hoped to rival the National League. The Red Caps played only one season because of money problems, and pro ball wasn’t attempted again in St. Paul until 1884, when the St. Paul Base Ball Club, or White Caps, played nine road games in the Union Association.

“Pretty unremarkable story, but the interesting part is there was a major league baseball team in St. Paul,” said Stew Thornley, a Roseville author and official major league baseball scorer who is writing a history of the Saints and baseball in St. Paul.

The flirtation with Major League Baseball picked up again a decade later, when St. Paul put a team in the Western League, predecessor to what is now the American League.

In 1895, Charlie Comiskey moved a team from Sioux Falls, S.D., to St. Paul. Comiskey owned, managed and sometimes played on the Saints until he moved them to Chicago after the 1899 season. The team became the White Sox and won the first official American League pennant in 1901.

Thornley said there are a few theories on why Comiskey left St. Paul, including blue laws that prohibited secular activities on Sundays.

“I don’t believe that because I don’t think there was ever any plan that they (Comiskey and league president Ban Johnson) were going to keep the team here,” Thornley said.

The upheaval of the early years settled by 1902, when a new Saints club began a 59-year run in a minor league known as the American Association.

Meanwhile, across the Mississippi River, the Millers established themselves as the Saints’ archrivals, with each franchise winning nine pennants until 1960.

The Saints were mostly forgotten for 33 years until the current version started playing as an independent team at Midway Stadium in 1993.

“The connections are by name only,” Thornley said. “When they played their first game here, they brought back some of the old Saints. It was a good thing to do.”

Midway Stadium became a destination, in some part because it was the only pro baseball local fans could watch outside. The Twins played in the Metrodome from 1983 until moving into Target Field in 2010.

“They pretty much sold out the first season, and then it was a hot ticket,” Thornley said.

The Saints have earned a reputation as ingenius marketers, focusing on fan experience to create a sort of game within a circus. They also have had big-time players roll through trying to rehabilitate their careers, including Darryl Strawberry, Jack Morris, Leon Durham and, most recently, Kevin Millar. In 1997, draft holdout J.D. Drew played for the Saints after refusing to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies.

The appeal of a Saints game has cooled, from selling out more than 6,300 seats to an average of about 4,800 this season, but that’s “still a good crowd,” Thornley said. “When they started, they were talking about 2,200 to break even.”

A new $63 million, 7,000-seat stadium is scheduled to be ready for the Saints next season in downtown St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood.

“I’m happy for the present Saints because it’s another avenue for people to go watch baseball,” Rantz said. “It’s going to be terrific for the community.”

Andy Greder covers two varieties of football — Minnesota Gophers and Minnesota United, aka the club embarking into Major League Soccer this year. Since joining the Pioneer Press full time in November 2013, he’s also covered the Timberwolves as a beat and spot duty from the Vikings to high schools. He was a part-time breaking news reporter at the Pioneer Press from 2011-13, when he was also a freelance writer and organic farmer. He started at the Duluth News Tribune in 2006, covering sports, news and business until living abroad in 2010.

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